When There are Clouds in the Sky
by Abagail Snow
Summary: Peeta Mellark returns to his hometown after serving in the Gulf War a changed man, and only Katniss Everdeen can reach him. AU-early 1990's
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is my day 3 submission for Prompts in Panem (**promptsinpanem tumblr**), which was for a war era. This one takes place during the Gulf War in the early 1990's. Sorry my war knowledge isn't the best, and I didn't have the time to properly research, so I kept things reasonably vague. Hope you like it!__  
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**When There are Clouds in the Sky**_  
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They live in a small town on the western border of Pennsylvania. The kind of town that used to thrive on a coal industry and hasn't found new means, even after the hills have been mined clean.

Not many notable people come from their town, and while many have enlisted, not many soldiers have seen action, let alone come home heroes. So when Peeta Mellark returns from the Middle East, after surviving a roadside bomb that killed half of his troop, it's a pretty big deal.

They plan a huge celebration, decorating the town square in red, white, and blue. And a giant banner is strung across Main Street welcoming him home.

Katniss knew of Peeta Mellark before he joined the army. They were classmates together, and living in a small town meant you knew your classmates because you shared all the basic subjects.

Peeta had always been stocky and strong, a champion wrestler, and a model soldier. But he was also a gentle artist. He wrote poetry that made people weep and painted beautiful pictures worthy of the most prestigious museums.

To Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark was the perfect specimen. She had never told him this or humored the idea aloud. There was no need, really. Peeta had always had plenty of friends to pay him that kind of attention, and while Katniss admired him, she didn't know much about the boy outside of her general observations.

Still, when he returns home on an overcast Saturday in the middle of September, Katniss is there, with the rest of the town, to welcome him.

The Mellarks' minivan pulls up and his parents file out, followed by his brothers, and there's a hush amongst the crowd anticipating for Peeta to emerge, but he never does. Instead one of his brothers opens the gate on the back of the van, to retrieve a folded chair that Katniss quickly realizes is a wheel chair. His other brother and father help Peeta from the backseat, and he hobbles to the waiting chair on one leg. The other leg, Katniss sees, has been severed just above the knee.

The people around her begin to murmur things in hushed whispers, calling it a shame that such a good looking kid came home so crippled. Katniss pays no attention to them though, and only watches Peeta as he sits with his hands folded in his lap and his jaw firmly clenched, while his parents wheel him across the street.

People approach him and force pleasant chatter, and Peeta, being Peeta humors them, with forced grins that never reach his eyes. Katniss studies him all the while from the outskirts of the crowd.

He's wearing his green service uniform, the same one he wore at church the Sunday before he was deployed, with the patches on the chest and sleeves that she doesn't understand. A few scars peak from his shirt collar, licking up his neck like flames. A reminder of the fire that marked him there, she supposes. There are a few medals pinned to his breast pocket now that he didn't wear before, and she wonders if that was his reward for giving his country his leg.

She never approaches him that night. He's got plenty of friends to catch up with and she doesn't want to get in the way. As she leaves though, she catches his eye and waves. He smiles at her and nods, and she finds herself smiling back. A smile that lingers as she walks home, thinking how happy she is that Peeta is home safe.

* * *

She doesn't see Peeta much after his homecoming party. Nobody does really. He keeps to his house and only seems to go out when he has therapy at the VA hospital.

That's where she runs into him.

Her mother is a nurse there, and her sister has started to volunteer as a candy stripper after school. Katniss picks her up on Tuesdays and Thursday because her mother works the night shift, which happen to be the same days Peeta has physical therapy, she learns as they chat idly in the parking lot.

He almost exclusively uses his crutches now and it shows. His shoulders are broader than they had been before, and when he grips handle of his crutch, every muscle in his arm ripples from his wrist to the sleeve of his gray, Army tee shirt.

He clears his throat because she's missed whatever question he's posed, and it's obvious that she's been staring, and she feels herself flush with embarrassment.

He grins at her though, a wide and earnest smile that she hasn't seen since he left for Kuwait.

"Sorry, that was rude of me," she says, flustered.

"It's a pleasure to be objectified by you," he says. "I'm used to people only checking out my leg these days." He purses his lips then, and bows his head. "Or what's left of it at least."

Afterward, he pauses outside the hospital entrance, balances himself on one crutch and makes a muscle with the arm that's free. She laughs and he winks at her over his shoulder.

* * *

Prim goes out with her friends one Thursday after work, and fails to tell Katniss about it. She sits outside the hospital for a good twenty minutes before going inside to look for her. Her mother relays the message, and she's just about to leave when she sees Peeta sitting in the waiting room.

He's with his parents, looking over a catalog, and she doesn't want to bother him by saying hello, so she continues on towards the elevator.

"Hey, Katniss!" he calls after her. She turns to acknowledge him quickly, but he's waving her over with a large, swooping gesture of his arm that draws the attention of the entire waiting room. "Come here," he says.

She does, and nods politely to Mr. and Mrs. Mellark, who both smile back fondly.

"You have an eye for beauty that I can respect," he says, and she blushes in response. He holds out the opened catalog to her. "Which leg do you like best?"

Her eyes fall to the page, but she doesn't really look at it before she says: "They all look nice."

"Oh come on," he says. "This is important."

She doesn't want to say the wrong thing, and sort of stumbles around a few responses, her gaze never leaving the pages.

"What if I pick out one that clashes with all of my outfits?" he teases her. "Or even worse, makes me look fat?"

"I wouldn't worry about that," she says, and her eyes flit to meet his, and they're bright and playful and blue. So, so blue.

She points at a leg that looks more robotic than plastic and he nods approvingly. "Good idea," he says. "In case of the robot revolution. I can trick them into thinking I'm one of them."

She hadn't thought of it that way, but she nods and smiles in agreement. Anything to keep him smiling at her in that way. The way that makes her cheeks flush and her chest fill with warmth.

* * *

It's two weeks later when she hears a loud, uneven tread outside her front door. Peeta wobbles in on two legs and a cane like a deer that's taking its first steps. She catches him when he stumbles, his body is heavy, and she begins to fall too, but Peeta is sturdy – all muscle – and he steadies them both before righting himself.

"I came to show off the new hardware," he says, only the slightest edge of frustration to his voice. "Guess I don't quite have my sea legs yet."

"There's your problem. Ordering sea legs for land," she says, but quickly regrets it because she's not sure if she's allowed to joke with him in that way.

He laughs though, and she feels relieved. "I like you Katniss," he says.

"I like you too," she says.

He sits on the sofa, while she makes hot chocolate and Nutella sandwiches, and she watches him from the kitchen as she works.

His sweater covers all of his burns, save for the flicker of scars up his neck, and his pant leg falls around his prosthetic as if it were a normal limb, even allowing him to wear both shoes – although the right sneaker is significantly more worn than the left. He doesn't look at all like a cripple, she thinks.

It reminds her of the day of his celebration, when all those people had pitied him for being ruined. She wonders what they'd say of the man sitting in her living room now.

They watch a bad movie on cable and eat their sandwiches in silence. Peeta dips his in his hot chocolate, and she curiously tries it too.

"Let me take you out," he says abruptly, and she realizes that he's been watching her with an amused smile.

"Okay," she says.

* * *

She borrows a dress from her mother, and her mother even helps braid her hair into the elaborate twist that she loves so much.

Peeta arrives early, and comes all the way to her doorstep, even though he's still not used to his cane and the walkway to her house is fairly steep. She's not sure if she's supposed to offer to drive, but he opens the passenger door for her before she can ask, and she slips in wordlessly.

"It's a good thing the bomb took my left leg," he says as he backs out of the driveway. "Or else I'd drive with a lead foot. Literally."

He takes her to the diner in the middle of town. It's a popular destination for the high school crowd, and since not many people leave town after high school, it's still frequented by a lot of people their age too.

They order burgers and share a milk shake, and all through the night friends from school stop at their table to catch up and say hello, as if Peeta hasn't just returned from home war with a missing leg. And all the while she thinks about how lovely and normal it all is, and how nice it probably is for him.

* * *

He doesn't talk about his time in the service and she doesn't ask. She figures if it's something he wants to talk about, then he will. But sometimes she notices things.

When he falls asleep on her couch one Saturday afternoon, while they had been watching a movie, the hem of his tee shirt rises up his torso just enough to pique her curiosity. His scars aren't long thin slits, like the one she has on the back of her arm, from breaking it as a child. They're dense patches, as if he'd been quilted back together in places. Shiny, taught skin, joined together by rough, ridged seams.

He stirs in his sleep and his entire body tenses. She's afraid that he's woken, and that he's angry with her for touching him. But his eyes never open, and he starts to thrash around in terror. Her first instinct is to run, and she distances herself across the room to observe him.

But he needs her, she can tell. She gathers him into her arms, and he struggles against her, but she holds him tighter, running her fingers gently through his hair, and whispering nonsense of everything being all right into his ear.

His eyes spring open, filled with tears, and he just stares at her like she's a stranger.

"Katniss?" he says. His blue eyes still a bit wild as they focus on her.

"You fell asleep," she says dumbly.

"That makes sense," he says, and tries to smile as if he can brush everything away with a touch of humor.

"Do you want to talk?" she asks. She's still holding him in her arms, and he's still clutching onto her so tightly, that the back of her shirt is stretched tight and wrinkled in his fists.

"Not in particular," he says.

"You were having a nightmare," she says, unable to ebb the worry in her voice.

"It happens," is all that he says.

His grip on her slackens, and she opens her lap to him so that he can use it as a pillow. He lays on his back, staring at the ceiling, while she combs her fingers through his damp, blond curls.

"Why'd you join the army?" she asks. It's not a slight against his choices, but it's a question that's plagued Katniss for some time. Peeta seems to be so gentle, and always avoids conflict. She never questioned his decision when he first enlisted, but she barely knew him then. Now she does, she thinks, and he doesn't seem to be the type to volunteer and be a soldier.

"To pay for school," he says. "Couldn't afford it on my own, and even if my parents had the money, my mother wasn't going to waste it on my English degree." He chuckles then, like they had a point, and it upsets her, because she does remember Peeta's writing, and it was exquisite.

"And there's a lot of honor in serving one's country. The discipline and camaraderie. It's important," he pauses as if something else is bothering him, but Peeta, being Peeta, doesn't want to trouble her with his worries. "I never thought I'd see active combat though, you know?" He frowns and his eyes turn shiny as glass. "Killing, to get what you want. I'll never understand it."

She leans forward and kisses him then. It's soft, and tender, and loving, oh so loving. She wants to protect him. To scare away his daemons, and when she feels his mouth open to hers, she thinks that maybe she can.

* * *

Things get serious pretty quickly.

Katniss joins the Mellarks for Thanksgiving dinner, and for Christmas Peeta gives her a gold locket after having dinner with her family.

She thinks she may marry him, but she never says those types of things out loud.

Her mother works on New Years Eve, and Prim rather spend it with her friends, leaving Katniss with the house to herself.

She lights a cliched number of candles and sneaks a bottle of champagne from the cellar, reasoning that she's twenty years old and allowed a taste of rebellion every now and then.

Peeta laughs at her when he sees the set up. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to seduce me," he teases.

She's already had a glass of champagne – and she had drank it quickly to help soothe her nerves, so she giggles and speaks a bit more brazenly than usual. "Maybe I am," she says.

He still uses his cane, but doesn't rely on it nearly as much as he used to. He discards it by the door in a swift motion and quickly wraps his arms around her so that she's pressed tightly against him.

They kiss like this often. An overwhelming passion that she can't help but get lost in. But the focus is always on her, and on the rare occasion that he allows for her to reciprocate, he only unbuttons his pants and pushes them as far down his hips as necessary.

She worries that he's ashamed, wishes for a way to show him that she loves every part of him.

She guides him towards the couch and he slumps down gracelessly in the middle of the plush cushions, opening his arms to her eagerly in anticipation.

Instead she drops to her knees before him, and a wicked grin crosses his lips, but falters when she reaches for his shoelaces rather than the target he was hoping for.

She removes his right sneaker first, to reveal a white socked foot, and then the left sneaker, which slips off easily over the metal flipper.

His breath catches when she sits up to unbutton his slacks.

"Katniss," he warns, his voice tight and nearly trembling, but he lifts his hips anyway when she begins to tug them down.

She's worked them to his knees when he frantically covers her hands with his to still her. "Please," he says. "I don't want you to see me this way."

His face is close enough to kiss him, and she does, until his hands slacken above hers and his pants are pooled around his ankles.

There's a strap that clamps around his thigh to hold the saddle of his prosthetic in place, and she unfastens it with trembling fingers, knowing that he is watching her with bated breath. It doesn't budge when she goes to remove it, and she's startled when his hands again cover hers.

"Let me," he says. He tips it gently upward to release the suctioned air and carefully pulls the false leg from the natural remaining part of his thigh.

Before he'd gotten his prosthetic, she'd only seen him in sweatpants or slacks with the pant leg pinned. It doesn't look any different than she imagined it would. His leg starts at his hip like any other leg, extends to his thigh and then just stops. The skin is shiny and puckered around the stump, and she runs her fingers over the smooth, taught scars.

"Does it hurt?" she asks when he flinches.

"It gets sore, yes, if I wear the fake one for too long," he says. "It mostly tickles right now."

She leans forward to pepper light kisses along his leg and he chuckles nervously.

"Do you want me to stop?" she asks.

"No, keep going," he says tightly.

"What are you thinking about?" she says right before her tongue darts out to trace along his scars. His skin is salty and faintly metallic tasting from the prosthetic.

"That if I knew it would get me the girl of my dreams, I would have lost my leg a long time ago," he says.

"Stop it," she says, and smacks him playfully.

"I mean it," he says, and his tone is so earnest that it throws her off guard. "When I got back from the Gulf, everyone treated me like I was this broken thing. I felt like a chore. But then at the party, when everyone was fussing all over me, I saw you, and you smiled at me, and I don't know," he frowns and bows his head. "I didn't feel so broken anymore."

He lifts her chin with his hand and leans forward so that their noses are nearly touching. "Even before that Katniss. Back in high school when you barely even noticed me."

"That's not true," she says with a sense of urgency.

He shakes his head. "Whenever I caught your eye," he continues, "I don't know. I just had the feeling that you understood me."

"Why don't you paint anymore?" she asks suddenly, as if it's a question that has been burdening her.

He grins and kisses her firmly.

"I like you, Katniss," he says, just as he did the first time he came to see her. "In fact, I like you so much, I think I'm in love with you."

She climbs into his lap to kiss him thoroughly.

"I love you too," she says.

She doesn't think she'll marry Peeta Mellark anymore, because she knows that she will. And on the day that he asks her, six months later, she doesn't have to respond, she only has to smile.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I've gotten a few requests for drabbles on some of my past PiP pieces, and thought that I'd post them here too, since they're not much shorter than some of the originals. If I ever do any additional drabbles, I'll be sure to post them too, but this still isn't an ongoing fic. Thanks for reading! And check me out on tumblr (__**absnow**__) where most of the drabbles are born._

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They get married in the spring. It's a small ceremony between services one Sunday with only their families in attendance. Prim braids flowers in Katniss's hair, and fastens an ivory sash around her waist over the dress their mother wore at her wedding. Katniss's hands won't stop trembling as her mother walks her down the aisle, and the only way she can hold herself together is to grip onto the bunch of wildflowers she carries for dear life.

Peeta looks perfect as usual. His Army uniform is freshly pressed without a stitch out of place, and every medal across his breast pocket is so polished and clean that when they catch the light streaming through the stained glass windows, she's nearly blinded. He doesn't usually walk with a cane anymore, but his hand rests lightly on the handle of the mahogany walking stick his brother brought home from Ireland.

Time stands still with each step she takes, and as she approaches the alter, she sees his knees begin to buckle, and his weight shift forward to support fully against the cane.

He chuckles nervously and his face flushes a bit before he says, "There will never be a day you stop sweeping me off my feet."

They get their own place — a cramped little apartment above one of the shops in town. The bedroom barely fits a bed and the living room barely fits a sofa and they have exactly one pot in their kitchen that they use to prepare every meal. But it's theirs, and she loves it.

Peeta goes back to school and studies to become a teacher. He has discipline and patience, but most importantly, he is compassionate and kind. Katniss is proud of him for pursuing more in life, but at the same time, she feels stunted. She's worked at the Walmart just outside of town since she was in high school, and although she doesn't hate it — she works in the Sports and Outdoors department after all — it's not exactly the career she ever envisioned.

But that's the problem, because she never really envisioned herself anywhere.

Now that she's married, it seems to be an even bigger issue. The ring on her finger may as well be a tattoo of the word "INCUBATOR" on her forehead with all the attention her womb suddenly gets. She's not opposed to having children, but she's young — only 21, and she'd like to get her life in order before she starts planning out another.

"We said the same thing too," her sister in law tells her during one of the Mellark's summer barbeques. "Then six months later the stick turned blue, and now we have three of them." Her eyes look tired, but her smile is genuine and bright. "Deep down, I think we were just _saying_ that we wanted to wait, but deep down, we were too afraid to say what we actually wanted."

Katniss nods politely and only bites her tongue, even though she wants to scream. She _knows_ what she wants deep down, it's everyone else who won't listen. The only opinion that matters about the whole thing is her own… and Peeta's.

Peeta never says much about the issue, only smiles apologetically when it's brought up because he knows how it makes her uncomfortable. But Katniss doesn't know what he thinks deep down in these alleged, baby wanting cockles of his subconscious.

He loves his nieces and nephews, that much is obvious. While he's social with adults at these sorts of gatherings, he's usually got a kid in his hands too. Bouncing the infant on his good knee while he chats with his father, or listening with actual sincerity while the toddlers are explaining the rules to some incoherent game they invented. He seems so happy around them. Eager too.

It weighs on her mind all through the afternoon and evening.

"I don't want to get pregnant," she exclaims as they slide into bed that night.

He blinks a few times, a bewildered look in his eyes. "Do you want me to use protection? Another pair of sweatpants to be on the safe side? Because Katniss, from what I've been told, you can't get a girl pregnant by sleeping next to her in your underwear."

She realizes she's gone about it in the wrong way. "You want to have kids," she says, hoping she's making sense.

"Well yeah," he says, perplexed.

"Right now."

"I wouldn't mind fooling around a bit." He let's out one of those uneasy chuckles he uses when he's saying the things he knows she wants to hear. "But that wasn't the intended end result." She gives him the look that says she's not convinced, and he laughs more genuinely this time. "Come on Katniss. Let's be realistic. Where would we even put it?" And his arm smacks against the wall loudly when he gestures around their tiny bedroom to emphasis how small it is.

This makes her feel better, and she takes his sore wrist in her hand, smoothing the muscles with methodical swirls of her thumbs. He sighs and leans his head against her shoulder as he watches. "You're really good at this," he murmurs, with a dreamy lilt.

She smiles. She is good at it. She's been to every one of his physical therapy sessions since they started to get serious, and she took detailed mental notes of all his exercises and cool down methods so she could help him at home. Even his PT complimented her when she was helping him stretch in the waiting room during a particularly sore day.

"I want to go back to school too," she says abruptly. She'd never have the money to become a full fledged therapist, but she's spoken with some of the assistants — who were no older than her — and they got an associates degree in less than two years.

Peeta nods, already half asleep, and rolls over to drape his arm across her waist.

Her mind's too excited to turn off, and when she closes her eyes, she pictures her future. And suddenly, it no longer scares her.


End file.
